Reader, Come Home


Book Description

The author of the acclaimed Proust and the Squid follows up with a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies. A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium. Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us—her beloved readers—to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including: Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain? Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves? With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know? Will all these influences change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives? How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain? Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about children—Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become increasingly dependent on screens. Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities—and what this could mean for our future.




Reading Home Cultures Through Books


Book Description

This wide-ranging, comparative, and multidisciplinary collection addresses the significance of books in creating the idea of home. The chapters present cases that reveal the affective and sensory dimensions of books and reading in the practice of everyday life of individuals, in communities, and in society. The complex relationship of books, reading, and home is explored through American and European case studies both in bourgeois and middle-class homes, and in working-class and immigrant families and communities with limited possibilities for reading. The volume combines the conceptions and representations of domesticity, the materiality of reading, and library as a place, drawing on book history and material culture studies as well as anthropology and sociology of the home.




The Administration and Supervision of Literacy Programs


Book Description

This popular book addresses literacy leaders' eternal quest to prepare all students for the demands of the 21st century. This updated Sixth Edition will help prospective and current literacy professionals understand how to organize and supervise literacy programs within the context of current state and federal mandates. With a focus on providing instruction at all grade levels and for different types of learners, the book explores specific program elements related to materials selection, teacher evaluation, professional development, student assessment, writing, technology, school- and districtwide evaluation, and parent and community outreach. Expert authors provide new insights about what administrators and teachers should know, and be able to do, given the expanded definition of literacy, a renewed interest in the science of reading, and a deep concern for closing the achievement gap that has become more prevalent across the nation. This user-friendly text includes examples, observations, research, and specific guidelines for improving programs in relation to current requirements and future expectations. Book Features: The most comprehensive resource on the oversight of PreK-12 literacy programs. Guidance to help specialized literacy professionals meet today's mandates for teachers and students. Chapters written by experts with years of experience working with their topic in schools. Real-life examples and vignettes demonstrate how theories can be applied to practice. Reflective questions and project assignments help make ideas relevant to a reader's unique situation. Connections across chapters and directions for future considerations help summarize and synthesize the information across the entire book.




ABC and Beyond


Book Description

The Hanen Centre's newest guidebook brings to life the most current research on promoting children's emergent literacy in early childhood classrooms. With the goal of preparing preschool children to learn to read and write successfully, ABC and Beyond shows educators how they can build language and literacy learning naturally into everyday conversations and activities. By translating the most current research into user-friendly strategies for educators, ABC and Beyond addresses the various prerequisites of literacy, including vocabulary, story comprehension, decontextualized (abstract) language, print knowledge and phonological awareness. More than 120 color photographs and many easy-to follow charts with detailed, practical examples beautifully illustrate how the strategies are applied in real-life contexts.







Raising Readers at Home


Book Description

This book consists of an easy-to-follow plan designed to guide and assist parents in nurturing and developing pre-reading/pre-literacy skills needed to learn how to read. Parents/caregivers begin their journey by examining and exploring why some children have difficulty learning to read. It is also noted the role they can play in preparing their children for the learning to read process at home. They are guided through the development of pre-reading milestones and behavior characteristics of young children. Additionally, parents/caregivers complete a self-assessment to determine their thoughts about learning which is important in setting up a creative and vibrant learning environment for their home. Before addressing the four components of the reading process, parents/caregivers are guided in setting the stage for learning to reading their home by establishing a print rich environment.




Reading Together at Home


Book Description

Written to show parents how children learn to read and help them develop their child's reading skills.




Read at Home: First Experiences: At The Dentist


Book Description

Read At Home is the best-selling home reading series designed for young, beginner readers. It features all the popular Oxford Reading Tree characters in exciting stories written for parents to support their children's reading at home. Read At Home First Experiences introduce young children to new situations and are ideal for parent and child to read together. Read At Home First Experiences help parents to: BLExplore the wider world with their child BLTalk about shared feelings and emotions BLBuild vocabulary through the fun activities RAH Level: Although these books have been created for parents to share with their child, they have been written to Level 4 of Read At Home. Level 4 is for children Building Confidence in Reading - those children who can recognise 30-50 words by sight, can read harder sentences, with less support, and can use sounds to help make words. The story is written with simple but more varied sentence structure and vocabulary with three to four sentences per page. Each story provides a range of fun activities to encourage talk and support reading skills: BLA puzzle activity in every book to make reading fun and practise looking at detail BLA game or fun activity like a Maze or Spot the Difference - a treat for children to enjoy at the end of the story Highly successful , high profile author and illustrator team: BLRoderick Hunt, author of the original Oxford Reading Tree stories, and Annemarie Young, are superb storytellers with over 50 years educational experience between them BLAlex Brychta's humorous and detailed illustrations bring the stories alive and are known to and loved by millions of Oxford Reading tree readers




Mommy, Teach Me to Read!


Book Description

No matter what type of long-term education a mother prefers, she can start to give her child a passion for books and a lifelong love of reading at home with Mommy, Teach Me to Read. The easy-to-learn and fun-to-follow reading programs and activities presented here offer a wonderfully rewarding way to spend time with your children before they start school. This at-home educational resource will help any child age 7 or younger become a better, more enthusiastic reader in a world where reading means succeeding.